


Be seeing you in your dreams

by TetrodotoxinB



Series: Whumptober 2020 [1]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, But Also!, Day 1, Good Friends, Hurt/Comfort, Needles, Nightmare, Waking up Restrained, Whumptober 2020, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:34:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26748127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB
Summary: Mac has a nightmare.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947493
Comments: 26
Kudos: 50
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Be seeing you in your dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the title Mandi!
> 
> And many thanks to [aravenwood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aravenwood/pseuds/aravenwood) for her extreme kindness in being willing to beta all of these whumptober fills! Especially so since she's also writing her own (amazing!) fics too! Please go check her out and give her some love <3

Mac tugs against the restraints, but nothing has changed. He’s still stuck. Still handcuffed to the chair. He can feel the drugs in his system making the room spin, making his head swim, making everything blurry and fuzzy around the edges.

“Hello, MacGyver. Oh, how I have missed you.”

Mac can’t see the face, which is wrong. It’s Murdoc. He’s right there. It’s Murdoc and he’s going to _hurt_ him. Mac twists and feels the pinch in his arm where the needle — the stupid needle that Murdoc left on purpose — digs into his arm, undoubtedly blowing out the vein. 

He twists again because Murdoc is getting closer, he can feel it. The needle is in his right arm -- it’s right there, he can see it -- but the pain is in the wrong place, the wrong arm. 

Mac blinks and Murdoc is in his face, twisting the needle, grinning as Mac grits his teeth to hold back the sounds of fear and pain. Sounds escape no matter how little Mac wants to give Murdoc the satisfaction of making him suffer, and it’s galling that Murdoc can play him like a fiddle with something so small as a needle. 

Murdoc twists and twists and twists and it goes on forever no matter how much Mac pulls away. It’s not like there’s anywhere to go. The needle digs in and it hurts, it _hurts,_ and Mac will never forget the sensation. 

Unable to watch the needle twist and turn, tearing under his skin, Mac looks up. Murdoc tries to meet his eyes but Mac can’t. He looks past Murdoc and there’s the box. Fear boils up, crashing down like a tidal wave, and he’s got to get away, he knows what’s in the box, and he has to get away. With all of his strength, Mac lurches away from Murdoc, and suddenly — unexpectedly — the back of the metal chair falls away. 

The impact nearly knocks the wind out of Mac, but he can’t just lie there drugged and defenseless on the floor. He kicks out and jerks his arms, anything to keep Murdoc off long enough for him to do _something._

He blinks and instead of Murdoc looming over him under shitty fluorescent lighting, it’s Bozer in flannel pajamas lit by the hallway light.

“Hey, Mac, you okay? I could hear you shouting from down the hall and then, you, uh, well…” Bozer trails off looking awkwardly at Mac who’s all tangled up in the bedsheets.

Mac blinks a couple more times and looks around, taking stock of himself and his surroundings. “Yeah, yeah. I’m good, Boze. Just a weird dream.”

Instead, of the desired result — Bozer leaving Mac to his post-linen-induced-nightmare clean-up — Bozer settles on the edge of the bed. 

“You wanna talk about it? You’ve been having those a lot lately. Is it Murdoc?” 

Mac slowly disentangles himself from the top sheet, which has cut off circulation to his arm below his left elbow where it’s tightly wound, and also from the fitted sheet that’s somehow spun around his feet, and sits up. 

“You know what happened. I told everyone when we were in medical.”

Now that circulation has been restored to his arm, the pinching, stinging sensation that likely triggered the nightmare has given way to numbness and tingling. It’s a relief, but the phantom of the needle lingers just under the skin of his right arm. It’s everything Mac can do to avoid looking at the tiny scar, just to see, just to be sure.

Bozer’s looking down at his bare feet and Mac stares out the bedroom door into the hall. Mac doesn’t want to make eye contact now and show Bozer that he’s lying. Because he is. He told Bozer the physical things that happened, but he hasn’t told any of them how he felt or what it’s done to him. Maybe it’s not an out and out lie, but Bozer will see through him either way.

“Mac?”

“Yeah, Boze?”

“Can I sleep in here tonight?”

Mac hangs his head and bites the inside of his lower lip. He doesn’t need this. “I’m fine, Bozer. Really. I didn’t hit my head when I fell and the dream likely won’t come back tonight.”

“That’s not- I’m not- I know you don’t need a babysitter, Mac. I just, since you went off to the Army, I’ve been out of your life. Not _gone_ gone, but I don’t really know the things that keep you up at night anymore. I don’t know about all your sneaky spy stuff. Sometimes I just feel like there’s nothing I can do to help you like I did when we were kids. And I mean it wasn’t like we did anything — we just slept on the floor together when things got bad. So it’s all I got. I don’t know how else to help. But, I mean, we’re also adults now and it’s awkward and I know guys don’t do that but I don’t know what else— ”

Mac gets it. Bozer needs to help and Mac knows how that feels — the need to help someone you love even when there’s nothing you can really do to make it better. 

“Please stay, Boze. I,” Mac swallows and looks at the floor, “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a while.”

Bozer looks at Mac just like his mama does — head tipped to the side, scolding him with a look that could weather granite. Mac has the good sense to look chastened while Bozer offers him a hand up from the floor.

“Just to be clear, your bed is big enough for both of us. I know we used to sleep on the floor but we’re grown now and my back hurts some days,” Bozer says as they resituate the fitted sheet.

Mac chuckles. “I’ve had my fill of sleeping on uncomfortable surfaces in the Army.”

Once they’ve made middle of the night bathroom trips and resituated their things, they climb into bed. Any anxiety Mac expected simply doesn’t materialize. It’s just him and Bozer sleeping side by side like any other Wednesday night when they were twelve and still grieving their respective losses. 

Mac lies on his back looking up at the ceiling and the lights that filter in the window from LA. From this distance it’s a faint glow, warm and homey, nothing like Murdoc’s sewer tunnel room of horrors. Carefully, so as not to disturb Bozer who is already lightly snoring, Mac pulls his right arm out from under the covers and looks at the crook of his elbow in the dim light. The scar is small, faint, nothing anyone would notice. Tentatively, Mac rubs his index and middle fingers over it, but there’s no pain, no residual tingling. Just healed skin. 

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He’s at home.

He’s safe.


End file.
